1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal lens and a display including the same, and more particularly, to a liquid crystal lens which controls an optical path and a display including the liquid crystal lens.
2. Description of the Related Art
A display displays an image by emitting light using various methods. A light emission method used by a display often serves as a basis for determining the type of the display. Various researches are being competitively conducted on each light emission method in order to effectively control the luminance of emitted light and improve display quality.
Apart from research conducted to control the luminance of light, research into a stereoscopic image display which displays a three-dimensional (3D) image by controlling an optical path has recently been drawing a lot of attention. Such a stereoscopic image display is based on the principle that a viewer perceives a stereoscopic image when a left image is input to the viewer's left eye and a right image is input to the viewer's right eye. A polarized method (i.e., a glasses method), a time-division method, a parallax-barrier method (i.e., a glasses-free method), a lenticular or microlens method, and a blinking light method are mostly being researched.
Watching only 3D images for a long time could cause a viewer to feel dizzy. In addition, the viewer may want to watch not only 3D image contents but also two-dimensional (2D) image contents.
If an optical path can be controlled differently according to different operation mode, it is possible to display both 2D and 3D images. Controlling the optical path freely can have various light-based applications in addition to displays.